The Diablo III Website outlines some new hotfixes applied to Diablo III. These once again carry a warning that these note may contain spoilers for anyone who has not completed the action/RPG, but this is a generic warning that doesn't really apply in this case. Gold drops form ash post and vases have been nerfed, leading to complaints that this prevents players from being able to farm them as before for the gold required to buy the items from the auction house required to play the game at the hardest levels, which seems illustrative of some balance issues yet to be worked out. Also, the I am (we are) Diablo III thread on Reddit is live where game designers Wyatt Cheng, Andrew Chambers, and Jay Wilson all discuss the present and future of the game.

Dev wrote on Jun 9, 2012, 21:36:Instead of focusing on these little problem spots that crop up (symptoms), they need to be focusing on how to shut down farmers and spammers, and preventing bots (the underlying problems that are creating the symptoms), and making it harder to steal accounts.

They need to make the drops actually be drops and not have entire categories of gear be based on the auction house. For lack of a better way to put it, fuck the economy. The auction house should augment the game, not replace the loot tables like it did.

I enjoy the game, but the fact that in order to progress or in order to have a chance at having somewhat unique gear requires use of the auction house kills it for me. I got a real sense of, "The stuff isn't going to drop, so why play in search of it?" followed by a rapidly diminished desire to continue playing the game. Having the loot doesn't mean dick in a game like this so just buying it on the AH, to me, is like putting down a fiver and the guy just takes the carrot off the stick and hands it to you.